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Amazon Wins Big on Black Friday

While Black Friday foot traffic to the bricks-and-mortar stores was similar this year to what it was last year, down slightly by 2%, online traffic exploded. This year, for the first time, more than $1 billion was spent on Black Friday in e-shopping, up 26% from last year, with the bulk of that spending, of course, being done through Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). While Amazon hasn't released the sales figures for that day, its Web traffic was up a whopping 30% from the same day in 2011. Another big Black Friday winner was mobile payment providers, with more than 15% of Black Friday purchases having been made this year via mobile phones.